Found
by madamemoonyblues
Summary: Teddy Lupin is lost without his father, whom he has never known. He is lost without his mother, who made him what he is. He is lost without the foolish facade that he shows the world. But when he loses what is most important to him, what will he find?


Teddy Lupin was a jumble of nerves and angles and shifting colors. He found it increasingly harder to breathe as he straightened his tie and rubbed at a spot on his boots. He cleared his throat and glanced around the empty dormitory. The other boys were downstairs with all of the visitors, no doubt, but Teddy didn't want to see them yet, or didn't want them to see him, or both. He was not good enough. He is never going to be good enough, not as himself. In front of the mirror, he contorted his face in concentration. Slowly, his features began to alter as he carefully studied the scrap of charmed paper in his hand.

He held a single picture of his father's final year at Hogwarts: Harry's dad and mum in an embrace, gazing alternately into one another's eyes or at the camera; a boy that Teddy could put no name to, who was shorter and stouter with round, wary eyes and a smile that faltered slightly at times; his father, a single scar running the diagonal length of his face but unable to mar the quiet smile on his lips or the brighter one in his eyes. In his right hand was a book with golden letters spelling Yeats across the spine; his left arm was looped around the waist of a darkly handsome boy, ridiculously wearing a leather jacket over his school robes. The jacket was familiar to Teddy after years of wearing it almost religiously. Even now in his robes he could feel the breast pocket's zipper over his heart, the worn leather faded and folding at his elbows. Teddy knew that it had to be held together by magic, and that was just fine by him. There was even a chance that his father had cast the spell; a chance that, even though the jacket was a memory of Sirius, perhaps the magic was also some small piece of his father.

Sirius Black, he had been named. A cousin, on his mother's side, or so he was told. But before his mother and father had met -- no, before his mother had even been born -- there was Sirius. Even in the photograph, Teddy could see that there was something different about him. It wasn't his looks, although that is what one would immediately notice of him: the curious counterpoint of inborn elegance and a deliberate sense of roguishness. He was the sort of person who would've seemed a celebrity were it not for the approachability in his cheeky smile. But that was not what set him apart from the other boys in the photo. It was the look in his glinting steel eyes -- sharp, fierce, and proud until the fingers at his waist tightened pulling him closer. They softened, warmed, and changed him completely. There was something about Sirius Black, and that something was that he was in love.

It had taken Teddy many years of growing up to understand the picture. When he was a child he had blushed over the kisses shared by the boy and girl in the photo; they often reminded him of Harry and Ginny, except with the purposeful switching of their eyes. As he'd gotten older, it was not the blatant affection between James and Lily that brought color to his cheeks; it was the quiet, subdued intimacy of his father and Sirius. Linked only by arms in a familiarly brotherly manner, their postures and more so their expressions held some open secret between them, as if they gloated over it. It had taken time and experience for him to see it, but once the hazy realization blurred into his consciousness, he was captivated by it. He had _found_ them. Harry had never mentioned anything of that sort in his secondhand stories of the past. Some instinct in him kept him from asking.

The picture, though it had raised many questions, helped answer others over time. Teddy was no longer a child; in the eyes of the law he had been a man for a year and some, and it had been three or four years since he had learned his first lesson from the picture, inadvertently. When Victoire Weasley had joined him at school, Teddy had been properly pleased. But in his fifth year, something felt off about the dynamics between them, and he found himself studying the photograph. It had taken no longer than five minutes to realize that the look on Lily Evans's face was being projected to him every day by a girl he considered only a friend, or family even. What it did not do was teach him how to tell her that he couldn't return her gaze of love and admiration. That, he had attempted on his own, and had only managed to hurt her feelings and embarrass himself as he balked at the question, _"Why?"_

That had led quickly to the second (and most important, Teddy thought) burst of knowledge imbued to him by the snapshot. If he was honest with himself, the truth had always been there, lingering, indiscernible to others but nudging at him until it was pushing, tipping him over the edge. He found solace in the photo, in the tender brush of elegant fingers at his father's neck. It had been them, Teddy had reminded himself. Remus and Sirius. Two boys. Two _men. _No one was staring or laughing. When James or Lily's eyes wandered to the couple they only smiled knowingly; once James tipped a wink at Sirius provoking a furious blush from Remus. The odd boy out looked rather uncomfortable but only in the sense that he seemed to be stranded between two solid islands of love.

Teddy reassured himself with this, under his breath at first and then louder, bold and brash against his Hufflepuff nature. "_In love_," he would say firmly, when the dorms were empty on Hogsmeade weekends or during a long, silent detention received for smashing something in his clumsiness, again. "My father and Sirius were in love." And Teddy could see why. The more he turned to the photo for strength, for a sense of acceptance, the more he could see himself in his father's place. He spent long hours in front of the mirror tweaking hair, eyes, and forming a scar across his face, and he smiled. For a moment he could pretend he was a Marauder, someone who belonged, someone who was worthy of being loved…being loved by a man like Sirius Black. He was not an orphan, or a klutz; he did not awkwardly join in when boys his age spoke about girls or hide away behind his curtains at night, dreaming of the life he couldn't have. No, when he held the picture in his hands, he was not Teddy Lupin at all, and that gave him peace.

And the day had come when he would leave behind everything. He would go away into the world, anywhere he fancied, alone and wild and nothing like he had ever been before. He was ready. He tucked his picture into an outer pocket of his trunk. Receiving his diploma in front of a Great Hall that seemed to be filled almost exclusively with Potters and Weasleys was not quite as climactic as he had imagined. Standing in the midst of the many guests on the grounds made him yearn for some means of escape; each smiling face was like a rope tying him to who he was and didn't want to be. He was finally free to run away from himself. Couldn't do that without his photo, though, and that was currently in Hogsmeade in this trunk. He would apparate to the Potters' from there and then the world was his upon a platter; he could steal off into the night in his jacket with his photo to keep him company -- less like a father's watchful eye and more like a set of cohorts in his adventure.

That night many a shot of Firewhiskey was passed to him in celebration; many hands were clapped to his back in congratulations. He was knackered and very, very drunk by the time he tripped over his trunk and into the bed that he thought might be his. He woke up with a pounding head and the realization that this was Lily's room and his feet were hanging helplessly in the air where the bed ended. A hangover potion later and he was rummaging through his trunk for a Muggle outfit to go with his jacket. He didn't want to spend forever hanging about with Harry as some sort of tagalong. He would be gone, soon, now. He pulled on jeans and a shirt and shrugged the jacket over his shoulders, feeling as if he were really coming home for the first time. He was ready to be his own man. He didn't have to be Teddy Lupin, Remus Lupin's son; Teddy Lupin, Harry Potter's godson; Teddy Lupin, the bane of Bill Weasley's existence. When it came down to it, he didn't have to be Teddy Lupin at all.

He was about to shrink his trunk and tuck it into a small rucksack when he remembered the photo. That was crucial. That was what had gotten him where he was, to this freedom that would finally make him happy. He unzipped the outer pocket where he had so lovingly placed it and reached an eager hand in. He grasped at air. Nothing. A jolt shot through him and he hurriedly unzipped the next compartment, but his searching fingers returned empty. Bile shot up in his throat but he knew it couldn't be gone, couldn't have just disappeared. Who would have taken such a sentimental thing? It cannot have gotten up and walked off, although Teddy has known several magical objects to do just that. His frantic whispers to himself were desperate ("It _is_ here, I _will _find it, it _cannot _be lost.") but his hair was turning faintly red at the tips and his eyes, though amber as they had been a moment before, were giving off sparks of anxiety. He emptied each pocket of the trunk with shaking hands and then simply tipped the entire thing over, rummaging through pockets of trousers and folds of robes, running his fingers again and again through the scattered debris in the deepest recesses of the trunk. His hands flew to the breast pocket of his jacket, hopeful, although he would have felt it there against the spastic flicker of his heartbeat.

Harry had not seen the photo. Ginny had not seen the photo. The children, and particularly James, denied even knowing which photo he meant. He tried any number of lost-and-found charms. The angry, frightened red streaks of his hair dulled away as the day wore on…as the evening came…as the moon rose full and bright in the sky like a face laughing at him, and he thought, "This is how my father felt when that orb looked down on him, mocking. This is what it was like to really be Remus Lupin." He is disillusioned by this singular experience; by losing this image of an idyllic world. It is shattered in its absence. Without the blushing pleasure of his father, the euphoric laughter of Sirius Black, even just the blank, nervous stare of the boy he'd never heard a single story about, the illusions fell away and he was left with the moon gloating above him. He does not wish to be his father. He does not wish to be a Marauder. For once he wishes he knew how to be himself.

Even lying in bed that night feels empty without the familiar faces. He gets up and paces as if he is waiting for something. The picture to reappear? The bottom of his world to drop out from under him? He doesn't care at this point. It is in this night, and the following nights, that something starts to grow once again inside Teddy. He loses the will to use the minor tweaks that will make him more like Remus. The one time that he tries, on a Sunday morning when James requests a story about Remus and needs Teddy to act it out, he finds himself unable to work the changes on his body. His mind is not willing. He is grounded. He is Teddy Lupin, and he will never be able to create the grand imitation of the past that he has been after so long. He will sit and rot a lonely, clumsy pouf and never get anything done in his life. He will live in Harry's guest bedroom and try to picture the photograph in his mind every night for hours until he passes out from exhaustion. What a future.

Something within him will not, cannot, let this happen. That something forces him to move his things back to his grandmother's house, visiting the Potters only on the weekends. He is so caught up in himself and finding out who he is without his father's face to hide behind that he doesn't realize that this is the year Albus will start school, leaving Lily home alone. Doesn't realize that James will be a 5th year, and that he is acting strangely all the time -- slipping, barely seen, into empty rooms, rooting around in his pockets. Asking for stories of the Marauders and looking crestfallen when it is another tale of his namesake blowing up one thing or another. Once or twice he has wondered aloud if he should grow his hair out. But no, Teddy only notices his own face in the mirror every day. He does not look like his father. In a way, he cannot look like his mother. He is a child from nowhere. He doesn't feel very much like a man crying at night, remembering the comfort of his father's arms tight around a welcoming body; the glow of a smile that could only be given to someone who held your heart. Teddy is hollow. Teddy is left wanting. Teddy is, in essence, giving up.

He makes a decision. If he cannot be free, he can at least be happy. He is not his father and there is no Sirius Black out in the world waiting for him. There is, however, a waiting Weasley girl who has never quite forgiven him. Term is approaching quickly. His first year in ages that he has not loaded his trunk down with school robes and textbooks. His first year that he did not follow the ceremony of tucking the picture into his trunk for another year, to be pulled out only when he was within the confines of his yellow and black bed hangings. It hurts a little to not be going back, and this surprises him. This feeling, along with a plan to set his life to rights ("_To wrongs_," the voices in the photograph whisper, "_it's wrong, don't give up, we're out here, come and find us._") is what draws him to King's Cross Station on September 1st, 2017. He is nineteen years old.

He evades, with some difficulty, all Potters and Weasleys in his vicinity until he finds his way onto the scarlet steam engine, hurriedly ducking his head into doors to find who he is looking for. There is still a riot stirring in him, in the pit of his stomach where his dreams churn ever onward, that hopes that he will not find her. But there she is, stunning even in her femininity, and closing his eyes as tightly as he can, there is a flash of grey steel light in his mind and he presses his lips to hers. He does not touch her because it will break the spell of his imagination. He is Remus and the gleaming sunlight in the photograph has vanished; the others have disappeared into the night and it is _them_, he reminds himself. Them, in love. The thought is too powerful and he bites at the lips sliding against his. The resulting gasp is high-pitched and soft. He is disappointed and pulls away to explain himself when there is an indignant squawk behind him.

He turns swiftly, knocking his nose against Victoire's, but he is not fast enough to hide what he has been doing. Somehow it is even more shameful to know that he had not meant it, as if that somehow made it more wrong. James's mouth opens and closes a few times, expression somewhere between confusion and hurt, and the hand not propping the compartment door open grabs onto the wall. Teddy is panicking. He thinks his hair might be changing for the first time in months. Unsure of who to start fumbling words at first, he chooses the one that he expects to be the easiest and pushes James by the chest out of the door and into the opposing wall, shutting the compartment door behind him. He ignores the fact that touching James requires no silent mental preparation or subtle trickery. He can feel the boy's heartbeat beneath his hand and instead of pulling away like he normally would, he leaves it there and feels the rapid pounding beneath the skin and flesh and bones. He is amazed by the power of the heart and wonders what makes it race so.

"What do you think you're _doing_?" James wails, and Teddy is about to snatch his hand away and apologize when he realizes James is pointing across the hall towards the compartment where Victoire is no doubt waiting, bewildered. "That's Victoire in there!_ OUR_ Victoire! That's disgusting!" A shudder passes through his body and, in turn, through Teddy's hand.

Teddy laughs and has no idea where the sound comes from. "She's only your cousin, not mine,' he says, remembering these arguments from his earlier years.

"That's not what I meant! You can't do this. You don't even like her, you told us that, you told us over and over, and you wouldn't have anything to do with her and she's _Victoire, _Teddy, that's not right and you know it's not!" His heart is hammering hard against Teddy's hand and he thinks wildly that any second he will feel the wet pulse of it as it breaks its way free from his chest. James takes one deep breath and looks like he is going to start again when Teddy's eyes happen to wander down and see just the edge…the slightest glimpse…of James's hand slipping into his pocket holding something flat, thin, and rectangular. The voices are back and Teddy knows that he is not crazy because this must be some sort of rogue magic. ("_You found us, Teddy, take us, take us, take him_!")

When the force of it hits him, he pushes away the anger to think. Has James had it all along? He vaguely recalls how early he seemed to retire on those Saturday nights when Teddy was visiting and all of his self-hatred is deserved in that moment for simply not seeing. He is acutely aware of James's eyes boring into him, not angrily, but suspiciously as if he is really looking at him and not the careful duplication of his father that, even without changing his looks, he is always projecting. Leave it to James to see everything when Teddy is so unbelievably blind. His voice is too knowing as he repeats himself. "It's not right."

He lifts his hand deliberately and turns away. "Why isn't it right?"

"You shouldn't be messing about with girls."

Teddy shakes his head. James is fifteen. He should be elbowing Teddy and winking, all grins and implications. He is far too old to be leery of females and much, much too young to be falling into the same trap that Teddy has. He worries for him. It is the first time he has worried for someone other than himself in so long that he actually feels pain with the emotion, stabbing at his gut. He cannot bear to think of James, childish and vibrant, ruined. "But you should be," he answers quietly, and he resists the urge to dip his fingers into James's pocket and pull out the corrupting photo. It has driven him to this, to what he is today, and that is not what James needs, not the way that Teddy needs it -- needs it so deeply that he wants to take James by the shoulders and show him exactly what he would be getting himself into. Instead, he turns around and leans in close, the taste of Victoire still on his tongue, and merely breathes for a second, looking into hazel eyes. He reminds himself for a moment that he's not allowed to feel hope, that he should not be pleased by the gleam in James's gaze. This is nothing he had ever imagined in his search to replicate the feelings within that one snapshot. "It's not real," he says, almost pleading, not sure which of them he is trying to convince.

"But it could be."

And then he is gone. There is a flutter in the air and for once Teddy's reflexes react properly. His hopes are dashed, though. James Potter apparently has more than one photograph in his arsenal. The picture snatched from the air is not of the Marauders; there is no smiling Sirius Black, no enthralled Remus Lupin. It is a picture taken at Christmas: Harry, on the sofa with Ginny perched in his lap; Albus, flailing madly at the gifts around him, oblivious to the camera or the people in the room; Teddy, flipping happily through a tome full of Muggle poetry in the furthermost corner of the room. And behind him, nearly out of shot, is James, leaning over the chair's back, dragging his finger across a line of rhyme and grinning madly down at Teddy, who is laughing up at him with amber eyes. There is no scar on his face; his hair is turquoise and sticking in seven directions. James's brown hair is cropped short and his fierce eyes are not grey. Somehow, it does not matter. Somehow, it is the same.

_You found us._

_A/N: Well, then. This was a wild hair in my mind a very long time ago, and I finally decided to put it up after rereading it tonight. I understand it's probably hard to follow and any suggestions on how to work on that would be appreciated. Unrelated note: Grammys....yay. Anyhow, read and review, if only to tell me what I need to fix.  
_


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